Each migrant paid around 2,000 euros to be crammed onto a tiny boat crossing the Mediterranean

As efforts continue to prevent the migrant trafficking mafias from exploiting Africans desperate to reach the EU, the Policía Nacional in Spain have successfully dismantled one of the organizations which was charging people up to 2,000 euros for voyages across the Mediterranean on perilously small and fragile boats.

During 2018 over 57,000 unauthorized migrants are reported to have arrived in Spain, either reaching the coastlines of Andalucía, southern Spain and the Canaries on these “patera” boats or being intercepted en route, a record figure which is higher than the total of the previous eight years combined. Such are the profits to be made by selling “tickets” on board these boats that some criminal organizations in northern Africa currently prefer to smuggle people rather than illegal drugs, and by transporting a dozen or so migrants in a single boat the members of the group busted were netting around 25,000 euros per trip.

In total it is estimated that the organization ferried some 500 immigrants, most of them Moroccan, to the coastlines of Cádiz and Almería between August and December, charging a total of close to a million euros. Once passengers had paid for their passage they were housed temporarily in accommodation owned by the organization until the date of their departure, and then those who made it ashore in Spain without being detained were picked up, crammed into car boots and taken to other “safe houses” in the province of Almería.

However, the temptation to add drugs to the load on the overcrowded boats remained too strong to resist, and the police raids during which the members of the group were arrested also yielded 101 kilos of hashish.